Two incidents of the most opposite kind call attention to
the condition of our American relations. General Walker has con- fiscated a charter granted by the Government of Nicaragua, we believe, to a company got up in the United States for carrying on a transit across the neck of land, chiefly with a view to the communication between New York, New Orleans, and California.
The company has been extremely successful, although it started almost without capital, and has got along entirely upon its eam- ingn. A squabble within the company threatened to end in its being sold, by its own managers, to a rival enterprise ; and the shareholders have procured Walker to confiscate the charter, with a view of renewing it to themselves. It is probable that they have diverted to his uses some of their funds, This is a new local complication in the Penelope's web or the Cen- tral American question ; and it is not at all disentangled by the alliance of four of the Central American states against the military adventurer who acts as sovereign of Nicaragua, and provokes the subjects of Sardinia and France to claim protection from their Governments, as well as those who have already ap- pealed to London and Washington. The report of the new im- broglio reaches us just at a time when serious apprehensions have been created by the latest reports on the state of our rela- tions officially. The speech of Mr. Baxter at Dundee comes as a memento to remind those who are responsible for the conduct of our public affairs, that the commercial community of this country is not prepared to tolerate any dallyings with the preliminaries of war, which might set us " drifting " into hostilities West- ward as soon as we have concluded peace Eastward.
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